In 1996, lobsters in Rhode Island inshore areas started to appear
with what we now know as epizootic shell disease (ESD), a characteristic
bacterial degradation of the external shell. By 1998, prevalence levels
were more than 20% overall, with almost 80% of ovigerous females showing
signs of infection. Rapidly declining abundance, landings, and
young-of-the-year surveys in the Rhode Island area caused great concern
for lobstermen, biologists, and managers about the health of the
southern New England stock. Then, in 1999, lobster health was brought to
the forefront when the Long Island Sound (LIS) was declared a
"commercial fishery failure" resulting from a resource
disaster after a large mortality event occurred affecting American
lobsters, Homarus americanus, and devastating the commercial industry. A
total of $13.9 million in federal disaster relief funds were authorized
to provide economic assistance to the commercial lobstermen and to
support a comprehensive investigation of the lobster mortality event.
This LIS Health Initiative culminated in a journal publication with 24
new papers, some addressing the appearance of a newly reported disease,
ESD. Since the LIS event, the incidence of ESD has increased to highs of
35% of lobsters being affected in some areas, and reports of the disease
moving northward through Massachusetts. New funds were allocated for $3
million to continue work on ESD health issues and to support state trawl
surveys in Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, and ventless trap
surveys in Rhode Island and Maine. The funds were obtained by Senators
Jack Reed (RI) and Olympia Snowe (ME), and were passed from NOAA
Fisheries to the University of Rhode Island through a proposal process.
An ad hoc steering committee was established to create a synthesis
document, priority topics, and a vision for the New England Lobster
Health Initiative (NELHI) consisting of Roxanna Smolowitz (Marine
Biological Laboratories (MBL)), Sylvain De Guise (Connecticut Sea Grant
(CTSG)), Paul Anderson (Maine Sea Grant), Kathy Castro (Rhode Island Sea
Grant), Mark Gibson (Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management
(RIDEM)), Nancy Langrall (Senator Reed policy director), Ben Terry (URI
student), Terry Smith (National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS)), Jack
Mattice (New York Sea Grant (NYSG)), Mike Marchetti (Rhode Island
Lobstermen's Association (RILA)), Barry Costa Pierce (Rhode Island
Sea Grant), and Stan Cobb (University of Rhode Island (URI)).

Rhode Island Sea Grant was contracted to run the proposal process.
Nine new research projects were selected, but were combined to produce
15 new studies. Two state agencies and more than 35 scientists and
graduate students from the following institutions were involved in this
initiative: Boston University; Carl yon Ossietzky University of
Oldenburg, Germany; George Mason University; Georgia Aquarium; Ludwig
Maximillian University, Germany; Maine Department of Marine Resources
(DMR); MBL; New England Aquarium; NYSG; RIDEM; Roger Williams
University; Stony Brook University; University of Connecticut;
University of Louisiana; University of Massachusetts; University of
Maine; Virginia Institute of Marine Science; and Woods Hole
Oceanographic Institution.

These projects were organized under the host pathogen-environment
model. Three groups used different techniques and approaches to look at
the microbiology on lobster shells to identify the pathogen causing
shell disease, and to determine whether affected lobsters have
suppressed immune systems.

One project examined whether different lobster populations have
different susceptibility to the disease, and whether there is a
relationship between that susceptibility and genetic and/or behavioral
differences between the populations. Four projects examined how
environmental stressors--such as increasing water temperature or
environmental contaminants--affect lobsters, whether through interfering
with shell formation or hardening or impacting lobster genetic
expression. And one project developed new techniques to compare shells
of healthy and sick lobsters.

An executive committee was formed to supervise the progress of
these research projects and aid in the communication of sensitive
material to the public. Members included Bill Adler (Massachusetts
Lobstermen's Association (MLA)), Paul Anderson (Maine Sea Grant),
J. Stanley Cobb (retired URI), Barry Costa-Pierce (Rhode Island Sea
Grant), Lanny Dellinger (RILA), Mark Gibson (RIDEM), Marta Gomez-Chiarri
(URI), Don Landers (Millstone Environmental Laboratory of Dominion
Resource Services, Inc. (Millstone Environmental Laboratory)), Patrice
McCarron (Maine Lobstermen's Association), Richard Rhodes (URI),
Terry Smith (NMFS), George Williams (Darden), and Carl Wilson (Maine
Department of Marine Resources (DMR)). Special recognition goes out to
Harlyn Halvorson, whose untimely passing did not allow him to see this
research to its completion. Although not a lobster specialist, his
concern over the health of the oceans made him acutely aware of the
plight of the lobster, and this concern gave him the foresight to
organize a meeting in 2005 to think proactively about how best to
understand shell disease. His forward and insightful thinking and quick
wit will be missed by all. We especially wish to thank Nancy Balcom
(CTSG) and Antoinette Clemetson (NYSG) for bringing their experience and
perspectives from the LIS study to assist in this endeavor. It ensured a
continuity of purpose from Congress through the individual states to
address this overwhelming new set of circumstances and hurdles on
managing their important lobster fisheries. During the 5-y project, 8
meetings were held to document progress, encouraging researchers to
share results with the executive committee and each other, and to focus
on the whole picture rather than just their part. The emergence of the
"100 Lobster" Project resulted from this more holistic
approach in which microbiologists, chemists, geneticists, pathologists,
lobster biologists, endocrinologists, physiologists, fishermen, and
managers could put their collective heads together. The synthesis
document in this journal captures this synergism. The amount of
knowledge gained from this initiative far exceeds the individual
projects and adds much new information about the lobster, the disease,
and the environment in which they live.

We wish to thank all of the agencies in New York, Connecticut,
Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Maine that assisted with lobster
collection. In New York, support was provided by Kim McKown, John
Maniscalco, and Carl LoBue of the New York State Department of
Environmental Conservation. From Connecticut, we are grateful to Don
Landers at Millstone Environmental Laboratory and Penelope Howell at the
Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection. At the RI DEM,
support was provided by Tom Angell and Dan Costa. From the Massachusetts
Division of Marine Fisheries, we thank Bruce Estrella, Robert Glenn, Bro
Cote, and Mike Syslo. We also thank Carl Wilson, Melissa Smith, and
Kathleen Reardon (DMR). We gratefully acknowledge the administrative
support from Kelly Taranto and Sarah Pike from the Northeast Fisheries
Science Center, and Laura Skrobe from the URI Fisheries Center. There
are also several inshore and offshore fishermen from the state of Rhode
Island, including Steve Seymour, Lanny Dellinger, and David Spencer, who
were instrumental in providing lobster samples for this research.

Interim documents were produced with the help of Monica Allard-Cox
from Rhode Island Sea Grant who produced the midproject report and
maintained the pages on the Sea Grant website. At the end of the
research projects, a 2-day public forum titled New Approaches to
Understanding Emerging New Diseases: From Science to Management was held
on August 10 and 11, 2010, as the 9th Annual Ronald C. Baird Sea Grant
Science Symposium at the University of Rhode Island. We thank Rhode
Island Sea Grant and especially Dr. Barry Costa-Pierce and Alan
Desbonnet for providing oversight and suggestions for the symposium
content and structure, and for securing additional funding.

A special subgroup remained as the editing committee for the
production of the journal publication herein. This included Dr. Kathleen
Castro (URI Fisheries), Dr. J. Stanley Cobb (retired URI), Dr. Marta
Gomez-Chiarri (URI-Veterinary Sciences), and Dr. Michael Tlusty from New
England Aquarium. Barbara Somers and Laura Skrobe from URI Fisheries
Center provided countless hours of logistical and editing support. A
special thanks to this group for the endless hours reading and rereading
the manuscripts, and correcting the small glitches.

We wish to thank the National Shellfisheries Association for
accepting this compendium of papers as a contribution to a special issue
in its journal series. We thank all the authors who submitted
manuscripts for publication in this special issue of the Journal of
Shellfish Research. We also acknowledge the anonymous volunteer
reviewers whose efforts greatly assisted the writers in producing their
manuscripts.

We would like to thank Darden Restaurants for their support for the
annual workshops that were held in order to present ongoing research and
results from the investigators associated with the project.

This work was supported by the National Marine Fisheries Service as
the New England Lobster Research Initiative: Lobster Shell Disease under
NOAA grant NA06NMF4720100 to the University of Rhode Island Fisheries
Center. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and do not
necessarily reflect the views of NOAA or any of its subagencies. The
U.S. government is authorized to produce and distribute reprints for
government purposes, notwithstanding any copyright notation that may
appear hereon.